as worth the russian assets or washington correspondents america has more samir it's getting harder to keep up with the rate of sanctions washington's imposing what do we know about this latest statement from the treasury well the treasury department did explain it all and its statement saying that these efforts have been taken in order to counter russia's efforts to challenge the u.s. and its allies listing a few examples including the occupation of crimea subverting western democracy its neighboring the assad regime just to name a few now in the statement to the treasury department also reiterated how well they're saying that they go away saying quote the treasury's russia sanctions program is among our most effective and impactful since january twenty seventh this administration has sanctioned two hundred seventeen russian related individuals and entities for a broad range of activities check out what else was the bread and brazenness of russia's malign conduct demands a firm and vigorous response our actions are imposing an unprecedented level of

financial pressure on those supporting the kremlin's malign agenda and on the sectors of the russian economy though russia's malign activities continue its adventurism undoubtedly has been checked by the knowledge that we can bring even more economic pain to bear using our powerful range of authorities and that we will not hesitate to do so if its conduct does not demonstrably and significantly change now while these sanctions are effective and that's what the u.s. claims they come at a pretty steep price not only do they impact the u.s. but they also impact europe and the european commission had a few words of course u.s. policies are impacting on german foreign trade individual companies are grinding their teeth and i should really affected german companies for a short term loss of all. ongoing business operations worth hundreds of millions of

euros furthermore the short term terminations of contracts with suppliers for example could lead to production losses along the entire production chain since a replacement of equal quality has to be found first. america first cannot mean that europe's interests come last. and the fear is that american policy will restrict the behavior over european companies and impact in their view policymaking with the. europe's energy supply is a matter for you or not the united states of america even though trump says that he wants to improve relations with russia it seems that out washington doesn't really want that to happen. to discuss this further we go live now to daniel mick adams executive director of the ron paul peace institute welcome to the program now in your opinion where is the limit how far will washington and i apologize it looks

like we're having a technical problem and we've lost our guest if we can we'll go back to him and later in the program. one of the malign activities you heard about earlier that's upsetting washington right now is supposedly russian hacking and microsoft claims it's thwarted a fresh attack the tech giant says the targets were the u.s. senate and conservative think tanks but mainstream outlets reporting on microsoft's findings rushed to draw their usual conclusion about who might ultimately be behind it all thames five russia to hack u.s. senate and conservative groups for hacking group affiliated with the russian government the russian military operation the intelligence operation the russian military intelligence unit earlier i spoke with r.t. as it goes down of who worked on the story for us. well basically what the companies saying they've seized control of from some group that they believe are russian hackers over a bunch of websites that were recently created and designed to copycat this is the websites of some republican groups conservative groups of the congress and so on

and so forth this technique in the i.t. talk is called fishing and it's basically designed to lure people in to deceive them to make them believe that they're visiting the actual web site while they're not and then the perpetrator can pretty much do anything they want them and microsoft is saying that it is resembling this situation and developed right before the presidential elections in two thousand and sixteen have a listen we saw this during the united states general election in twenty six the last major in the french presidential election and now in a broadening way as americans are preparing for the november midterm elections first and foremost are these websites then can be these domains they can be created from anywhere in the world they can be created from any basement from the contact with the comfort of anyone's flat or apartment really microsoft insists it's fancy bears it's like kind of a notorious hacking group and we won't go deep into this but let's just say that they're linked to the russian government is very different is very debatable it's

a subject to debate it's not a an established fact but even still if if it's found the thing is microsoft explicitly says that they found and i quote no evidence that these domains were used in any successful attack moreover they do not have any evidence to indicate the identity of targets or even the number of targets of these apparent planned attacks so what we have here on our hands is a bunch of is a bunch of websites that were created and no one has even attempted to do anything with them and this is what the russian statement on this matter pointed out. again we have to state what was still to be obvious despite our desire it's impossible to comment on statements made without any evidence and that are clearly created for public attention it's sad that a big international company that successfully worked for a long time in the russian market and has to be a part of the witch hunt now has invaded washington. well bottom line is that every

time they hear the word king especially journalists well they jump out and they automatically assume russia especially if they have you know the trigger words in the text well now they're nevertheless microsoft is of course a veteran of the tech world they carry a lot of weight and they insist that the threat is real well the us act on that warning. microsoft in front has even made a suggestion as to how the you know the potential victims of the attacks should act and they've suggested that it's their tool they should be installing they've announced that they're developing is a thing called microsoft account god and don't i wish i could say it's the follow the money trail but it isn't here the are before they will be they are promising to provide it for free to anyone who may fall victim of the attack there will be threat notification and they promise to guide these their clients through how to make these networks and e-mail systems more secure so ultimately i'm afraid i have

to say that it looks like a very well designed have to admit p.r. campaign on behalf of microsoft and anywhere whether there is a threat or whether the reasons they're pushing their tool here. now go back to our top story as promised as the us treasury says it has frozen millions of dollars worth of russian assets and we now will go live to daniel mcadams the executive director at the ron paul peace institute thank you for joining us now as i was saying earlier where is the limit here how far do you think washington and its western partners will go to put pressure on russia. well i think it's right now the only tool in washington's toolbox and i think it however irritating it might be to the europeans the question the questions actions are much stronger than words the europeans aren't happy but will they go along with that there's a continuing to go along what's amazing about these new sanctions the that were announced by the undersecretary of the treasury is they sound identical to the

obama hillary clinton foreign policy so the question is the president trump was elected on a different foreign policy why do the people who are working for him pursue an absolutely opposite foreign policy is completely perplexing and another wave of sanctions that are due to kick in in november if their action doesn't cooperate that's when those are supposed to kick in do you think it's coincident that it's the month of the midterm elections well that's the whole point in this can't actually technically be blamed on president trump because this is what i would consider a somewhat of a coup by by pompei of the secretary of state these were kicked in based on a law that was passed in congress in one thousand nine hundred one they tie the presidents and on these two rounds of sanctions and essentially they do tell the president president can waive them but he has to waive them right at the time of the elections which of course would lead to more democrat speculation about whether president trump is in the pocket of putin so it's an unbelievable trap laid by his

own say department is on secretary of state it really is kind of a washington to against the president on of course there's already been accusations that russia has been meddling in the upcoming election so is there any chance that they will not come into a fact. it's difficult to say i don't see russia being forced to admit to something that it didn't do if that's the case the us is demanding that they never do it again well if it didn't do it in the first place then how could they never do it again with this cripple case and anyone who looks at this crippled case which is the impetus for this if you look even just barely below the surface it is an absolute comedy what they claim happened first it was on the door not in the car in the granola it's an absolute farce in the whole the whole idea of the pomp aoe would follow this as if it somehow some sort of proven fact just shows that he has has no interest at all in the truth and really is under interested only in undermining president trumps foreign policy if president trump is telling us the truth when he says he wants to improve relations with russia when at the end of the

day the accusations of meddling keep coming at the sanctions keep coming does that mean that they may be aimed at the wrong target then why don't they are sending good target for sanctions sanctions are absurd but the point is that the president there was look there's a new gallup poll that came out just yesterday that showed that three out of four republicans believe that the u.s. should pursue better relations with russia three out of four in among all americans fifty eight percent believe we should have better relations president trump is being hoodwinked here he's being forced into taking an extremely unpopular foreign policy and i would guess they're looking forward to being able to impeach him if he loses in november. and you say that sanctions aren't the answer and that trump is being backed into a corner is there any better way of settling such disputes besides sanctions and trade wars. trading is the best answer trading in diplomacy how about ten more helsinki type meetings about ironing like adults ironing over some of these issues

about dealing like adults with crimea with who started ukraine the us fomented the coup in ukraine created the unrest the us created the unrest in syria by arming jihad has to take over the government so an honest discussion ten more goals thinking type meetings and he needs to clean house in this treasury clean house in the state department get out the people who are determined to pursue a hillary clinton barack obama foreign policy when you mention the healthy summit but after the helsinki summit there was also uproar about trump being too close to russia is there any happy ending for the democrats on this side you know what that approach was in the prague to ask us mainstream media there was a gallup poll that came out immediately after the helsinki meeting and it showed that ninety seven percent of republicans wanted president drum to meet with putin again the media doesn't like to report this and among all americans it was over sixty percent agreed with the meeting in wanted to happen again we have the media

in the united states at war with the american people don't know mcadams executive director at the ron paul peace institute thank you so much for your time and your comments this evening. the syrian army is gearing up for an offensive on the last major rebel stronghold itll and the battle for the enclave marks the final stage of the syrian war and if assad's forces managed to retake it it will bring almost the entire country back under government control however ahead of the campaign many western media outlets have been doubling down on the narrative against a masochist but some saying the assad forces are certain to inflict heavy civilian casualties the same media though fails to mention the enclave is under the control of jihadi groups accused of war crimes if a turncoat takes a closer look. these yagur a few of the syrian civil war has strong it's now pretty much about this part of the country the northwest basically here in and around it is where you'll find all

the armed rebel groups the ones still putting up a real fight no wonder getting hold of this area would be the ultimate success for damascus five days after multiple airstrikes hit this once quiet neighborhood province killing dozens of people shattering whatever illusion of safety to me if it existed you listen to this c.n.n. piece and get the impression it looked province had been a peaceful oasis still showered by those bombs how about telling the viewers about the dicey melting pot it actually is the syrian army has been on a mission to win back land those rebels or even internationally recognized terrorists who stood in their way were given two options take out the white flag or get a one way ticket to it no kidding some were moved there on buses and that's when the real mess began instead of teaming up various groups and went to war with each

other and let's not forget some of the mightiest organizations running the show there moderates. h t s or to. arguably the most powerful and hair raising the very same people who used to be known as moose or syria's al qaida branch and if that name doesn't ring a bell just picture nine eleven or any other bloody carnage that took responsibility for. this is quite a trio to those who've heard of nor. would likely associate them with the beheading of a palestinian boy on camera they've also been blamed for torturing journalists and aid workers jaish al islam paraded kate's hostages through the damascus suburbs

they once controlled only to use them as human shields later this group along with was firmly on john kerry's terrorist list when he was in charge of the state department we've seen pictures we've heard testimony of shocking crimes committed by our. by al-shabaab it seems even london a staunch ally of some rebel groups has lost patients britain won't send any more cash to fighters and live as it says in the times newspaper u.k. diplomats have admitted the remaining rebel areas are falling into the grip of the hottest t.v. giant sky news came up with a teaser for their exclusive report from edward province on twitter but.